Pledge of Allegiance

You put your stuff in a bin and feed it to the conveyor belt of the metal detector. You walk through. You grab your cell phone and purse and wait for the rest of your family to emerge from the crowd. You see your brother being patted down by one security guard while the other passes a metal detector over the spike in his ear. Your mom is freaking out: “They’re not going to give us citizenship with him looking like that.”

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